Well, it’s Mid-July and with every summer, you just couldn’t enjoy it well enough without insects and poison ivy. They are part of God’s creation soooo… we should try to get along with them right? Easier said than done. Thankfully, we CAN live in peace and harmony with nature’s agitators. One thing I’ve learned in the past 5 years is that nature is designed very intelligently, and there is always a solution to our problems. We just have to look hard enough.
I’ve come to realize that everything in nature has an equal and an opposite. There’s up and there’s down, positive and negative, male and female, love and hate, health and sickness, venom and antidote, gravity and antigravity… if you think about it long enough you’ll tire yourself out. Examples are evident everywhere in nature. So, why not just give up and have faith that the statement is true. Embrace it. There is an equal and opposite for everything. So, that being said… Wouldn’t it be nice to know that God has an answer for everything? So long as we look for it, we will find it. Seek and ye shall find.
I grew up with an allergy to poison ivy. I swear to you, that I did not have to touch it. I just had to be near it, and I would be in the doctor’s office within a few days getting a prescription for steroids. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but calamine lotion doesn’t work. It may ease the itching for a couple of hours but that won’t stop the rash from raging on. In school, I began straying from medication. I knew that steroids were not limited to clearing up my rash, but were also wreaking havoc on my body. So, I tried to go without steroids one summer, using only calamine lotion. I figured that a topical application was better than taking something with systemic involvement. Two weeks after trying this route and I was back in the medical doctor’s office with the WORST poison ivy rash I had ever had. I had it on my stomach, arms, back of my neck, and the backs of both of my knees were covered to the point where I couldn’t walk without making it worse. I had to miss school, ruined several pairs of pants and got new sheets on my bed. (The only reason I’m telling you this is because you can’t tell me that you get it worse than I do.) But then, I decided to seek out a solution in nature. I won’t accept the answer, “you must take steroids”, because that is an unacceptable answer to me. A year later I found nature’s antidote. Jewelweed.
Jewelweed can often be found growing near poison ivy. It contains the chemical 2-methyloxy-1, 4-napthoquinone, which has a neutralizing effect on the chemical urushiol, found in poison ivy. Interestingly urushiol is also found in mangos to a lesser degree, which is why I have an allergy to mangos! My favorite fruit!! WHY!?!
Whole Foods store sells a jewelweed soap bar, as well as a spray, that you can apply to poison ivy rash. It will clear it up in a few days, depending on how bad the rash is. If you think you’ve brushed by some poison ivy, just wash the area once or twice with the soap bar. I let a rash get about 20% as bad as the one from my story, and after applying the jewelweed for a few days it completely disappeared. Awesome stuff. Check it out! The next sprout will be on nature’s solution to bugs!